Overview

In most post-conflict countries nongovernmental organizations are everywhere, but their presence is misunderstood. In The NGO Game Patrice McMahon investigates the unintended outcomes of what she calls the NGO boom in Bosnia and Kosovo. Using her years of fieldwork and interviews, McMahon argues that when international actors try to rebuild and reconstruct post-conflict countries, they often rely on and look to NGOs. Although policymakers and scholars tend to accept and even celebrate NGO involvement in post-conflict and transitioning countries, they rarely examine why NGOs have become so popular, what NGOs do, or how they affect everyday life. After a conflict, international NGOs descend on a country, local NGOs pop up everywhere, and money and energy flow into strengthening the organizations. In time, the frenzy of activity slows, the internationals go home, local groups disappear from sight, and the NGO boom goes bust. Instead of peace and stability, the embrace of NGOs and the enthusiasm for international peacebuilding turns to disappointment, if not cynicism. For many in the Balkans and other post-conflict environments, NGOs are not an aid to building a lasting peace but are part of the problem because of the turmoil they foster during their life cycles in a given country. The NGO Game will be useful to practitioners and policymakers interested in improving peacebuilding, the role of NGOs in peace and development, and the sustainability of local initiatives in post-conflict countries.

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9781501709234

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The NGO Game is a major contribution to our understanding of post-conflict interventions, democratization, and peacebuilding, as well as the specific cases of Bosnia and Kosovo. Patrice C. McMahon looks beyond what international NGOs and peacebuilding efforts claim to accomplish to get at what is actually happening on the ground. Her work shows us how and why these efforts fail by exploring in detail the activities of international NGOs, the resulting responses on the part of local societies and local NGOs, and the consequences of those actions. -V. P. Gagnon, Ithaca College, author of The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s

""The NGO Game is a major contribution to our understanding of post-conflict interventions, democratization, and peacebuilding, as well as the specific cases of Bosnia and Kosovo. Patrice C. McMahon looks beyond what international NGOs and peacebuilding efforts claim to accomplish to get at what is actually happening on the ground. Her work shows us how and why these efforts fail by exploring in detail the activities of international NGOs, the resulting responses on the part of local societies and local NGOs, and the consequences of those actions. ""-V. P. Gagnon, Ithaca College, author of The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s

Author Information

Patrice C. McMahon is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska. She is the author of Taming Ethnic Hatred, coauthor of American Exceptionalism Reconsidered and coeditor of several books, including most recently State Responses to Human Security.

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